


They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow

by middlemarch



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Conversations, Could Be a One-Shot, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, I've dealt with series cancelled too soon before, could be a WIP, here you go, plenty of profanity, season 4, that never was, why does Ruth come back?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28089168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Once, Sam would have flat-out refused to go to the staff meeting as it was being held at the ass-crack of day, but since he was trying to actually live to see Justine into real adulthood and stopped pickling himself, waking up early had become...doable. It was giving him a whole new perspective on life.
Relationships: Cherry Bang & Sam Sylvia, Debbie Eagan & Ruth Wilder, Justine Biagi & Sam Sylvia, Sam Sylvia/Ruth Wilder
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow

“So, if this is Eden, are you Eve? Or the snake?” Sam asked. Ruth sat there, taking his shit for a change, her blue eyes almost grey. It was unlike her or possibly it was more like her than he’d want to admit.

Debbie, who’d clearly cast herself as God Al-fucking-mighty, had just swanned out of the staff meeting as if she had a cape floating behind her instead of an ill-considered peplum on her scarlet jacket. Sam hoped the salesgirl on Rodeo Drive had made bank on the commission, since Debbie would never return to the boutique once she got a look at what that peplum did to her ass. He and Ruth were the only ones left at the conference table, Ruth backlit by the morning sunshine, a cup of coffee untouched in front of her. Cherry had laid a hand on his shoulder as she walked out, a reminder of the invitation to dinner she’d made a week ago, but she hadn’t lingered though the smell of her Magie Noire perfume was still faintly present.

“I’m whatever Debbie wants me to be,” Ruth said in a tone he didn’t recognize. “I’m a director. I’m sure I can be Satan again when it suits her.”

“No one forced you to come back, Ruth,” he said, frustrated with her self-indulgent self-pity. “I mean, you’ve got the makings of an excellent director, but no one made you stop acting. The door’s open, you can leave whenever you fucking want.” He didn’t mention the weeks that had passed since the holidays, when Debbie was setting up the network and Ruth had been nowhere to be seen.

“My father collapsed two days after Christmas, he had a massive stroke. I have to help with the bills,” Ruth said. She was looking somewhere but not at him—maybe at the new Eden promotional posters behind him, maybe into her memory. He let himself study her face, seeing the shadows under her eyes, the more severe way she’d pinned up her hair. Her chapped lips, the unflattering cowl of the dark blouse she wore, somehow reminiscent of a nun’s habit.

“Fuck—”

“It’s my turn, they helped me for a long time. For the whole time. He needs an aide, my mother can’t take care of him by herself, though God knows she’s trying,” Ruth went on. Had Debbie known all this and chosen not to say a word? Was that her call or Ruth’s request?

“It’s all on you?” Sam asked. 

“My brother Jack’s posted to Fort Bragg and his wife’s pregnant with their second. My sister Ellen’s in Topeka, she has four kids,” Ruth said. “The ladies from my parents’ church started a meal train and there’s a little disability coming in from my father’s job, but it’s not enough.”

“Christ, Ruth, do you need—”

“Debbie’s paying me well enough. I can’t complain,” she said. “She didn’t have to give me the job after I’d turned it down.”

“She didn’t mention that to me,” Sam said. He was technically a consultant but Debbie was making a pretty big fuss about wanting him to create and direct something “edgy and fun and female-forward, something with teeth,” which she’d bared as she spoke in a smile that was supposed to maybe be some kind of encouragement but felt more like a boa constrictor about to unhinge its jaws. He hadn’t committed to much, since he was still directing Justine’s movie, but that gig wouldn’t last forever.

“Yeah, before the holidays. She offered it to me at the airport, told me I should give up on acting, it wasn’t going to happen for me,” Ruth said. Shit, Debbie knew how to twist the knife and it didn’t seem like she had any plans to stop when it came to Ruth, however much she tried to cloak her behavior in generosity.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he said. 

She’d called him before when she had no one else to turn to, when she was pregnant. _In trouble_ , they’d called it when he was a kid. But not this time. Unless she had—there had a been a night in early January when he came in as the phone was ringing and ringing, but there was no message on the machine Justine had insisted he get and he’d just muttered _well fuck you then_.

“After the way we left things, I didn’t think you’d be especially interested in hearing from me,” she answered, shrugging. He had driven away without looking back. “And I had to call someone I knew would answer the phone.”

“Debbie,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Ruth agreed. “I mean, I called Sheila, but that was just to say hi, see if I could crash on her couch until I found a place. Guess it’s lucky you didn’t cast me in Justine’s movie—I would’ve had to drop out.”

“How’s your dad doing now?” Sam asked, avoiding Justine’s movie which was undeniably a fraught topic. There were a million questions to ask but not all at once. He’d have to ask as carefully as he’d direct a scene, except that there weren’t going to be any retakes or edits. He had one shot. He drank down the dregs of his own cup, the undissolved sugar too sweet.

“The same. He was at a rehab for a few weeks but he’s home now,” Ruth said. “He’s…he’s not who he was. He won’t be. And my mother won’t accept it. Honestly, even with everything, it’s easier being here. It’s easier not having to see it every day.”

“You feel worst about that,” he said. “About leaving.”

“I could have stayed. My father’s school, they offered me a job as a long-term sub. I would have made enough, just barely, to keep us going. But I had to choose which version of me I wanted to be less, the English sub in a cardigan and flats or a director at Eden. Working for Debbie,” Ruth said.

“Which you wanted to be less, not more,” he said, as much for himself as for her. To consider why she’d said it that way. “But you didn’t, did you? You would have liked the teaching more, coaching the drama club probably, and you still came back out here.”

“I know what you think, Sam, but I’m not entirely a fool,” she said, closing her eyes for a long moment. “I couldn’t turn down the money, the options it gives my mother. I couldn’t ask more from my brother and sister if I could do it all myself.”

“You’re punishing yourself. Still,” he said. “For Mark. For what happened with us.”

“Sam, why do you even care? You don’t owe me anything, we’re not—”

“You think we had one fucking fight and that’s it, I just stop loving you? You think I don’t care—”

“I think you shouldn’t,” she said, cutting him off, and that was the crux of it. Jesus Christ, she had a way of every once in a while saying something entirely true that was also bullshit, the words unadorned, not a script, not a line, just Ruth. Completely recognizable if only to him.

“I should have picked up the phone that night,” he said.

“Which night?” 

Sam wished the acre-long table wasn’t between them, that he was sitting next to her, close enough to reach his hand out to touch her cheek. Her hand where it lay beside her mug with its emphatic Eden logo splashed across it. Hell, he’d get down on his knees or crouch anyway, letting her look down at his face, waiting as patient as fuck for her to see what she needed to.

“All of them,” he said. “When you called. When you didn’t. When I got home after the bar. After I dropped Justine off at Rosalie’s. Last night.”

“Sam, it’s not that easy, I can’t just—”

“I know,” he said. “I still had to say it. I still wanted you to hear it. Maybe that makes me a selfish asshole, but that’s not news to you.”

“I wanted to hear it,” Ruth said, very quietly. “I—you, we’re so… Sam, I don’t know what happens next.”

“Who the fuck does?” Sam said, his hand fiddling with his own mug. “Except, this coffee was shit and you didn’t drink yours. Maybe what happens next is we find a better cup of coffee. Or, for you, a mocha. It’s too early in the day for goddamn hot chocolate and marshmallows.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from John Milton's Paradise Lost because Eden is the name of the station...


End file.
